Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes and Earth Structure

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I used this book in a course on earthquake kinematics. Previously I had used the Aki/Richards book 'Quantitative Seismology' and found myself rethinking my major! Fortunately I slugged through it and my fascination with seismology was rekindled by this book. It explains a lot of the concepts well enough for those with only a few semesters of calc/physics under their belts to easily understand. I was even able to use this book as a more clear reference for an Inverse Theory course I took. The examples are great, the diagrams clear and concise and the tone is relaxed. This book actually explains concepts that are not explained in the Aki/Richards book. I particularly like the section on Green's functions, waveform inversion, and moment tensors. There is even a chapter on Fourier analysis! This is a book I can go back to for clear & concise explanations of otherwise abstract subjects. My copy is heavily tabbed since I use it often. My only gripe is the size of the font and the layout. There are two columns per page so it makes for some tiny print and everything seems squeezed together and slightly busy. The authors do provide a nice web-site where you can look at all the diagrams in the book as huge images....free! The link can be found on Dr. Wysession's homepage at Washington University St. Louis.
All in all a great book on a great subject!

I have used this textbook for an intro to seismology class in college and have found it to be very detailed and covered a wider range of topics compared to other seismology textbooks. This book focus a great deal on deriving equations, so if you are a math person, it'll be a great way for you to learn. Problem sets at the end of each chapter are challenging but not totally impossible; and like most textbooks, only some of the answers are on the back. There are a few mistakes I found in the diagrams, but not it's not a big deal. Overall, I do recommend this book as an intro text book geared towards the upper level undergraduates or graduate students.

This book covers the essentials and then some. It goes beyond what can reasonably be covered in an introductory course. There is a good deal of derivations and presentations from several viewpoints. Covers seismology, interpreting seismograms, inverse theory, basic equations, earthquakes, earth structure. Loads of pictures, mathematics, and real-life discussions. Puts everything in a cohesive package. Expect a challenging read!

The book may say Introduction, but don't expect a "Seismology for Dummies" type set up. This book is actually quite advanced and detailed, jumping right into intricate math formulas. This is a great book for those already familiar with the basic concepts of seimsology, however those with limited math skills or no prior knowledge of seimsology will be turned away by the technicality of some aspects in the book.

This book is not an opportunity to use the earth to explain continuous media. Continuum mechanics explains much of the behavior that is observed on the earth. S&W is hardcore geophysics - not for the faint-hearted! The book does still use FORTRAN - can we please move on? But the derivation of the wave equation in the second chapter is a key for any PhD wanna-be to learn for their comps.